Roundabout
by lorcan
Summary: In which a psychiatric patient without a medical record communicates in an unorthodox way, and House and the team must find new ways to get enough information for their diagnosis. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

"Special patient for you all," Cuddy announced without preamble, dealing case files like playing cards. Gregory House's diagnostic team, slumped in their customary work-lull stupor, had to snap awake or risk decapitation by folder. Kutner's chair legs raked the as he bent to gather his from the floor.

Cuddy's surprise attack seemed to have caught House slightly off-guard, as she actually managed to get casefiles into doctors' hands before he ripped out the first snide comment. She had off-balanced him more frequently of late – which is to say she managed it at all, as the achievement had once been only a hypothetical possibility – and more than one bright mind on his team was beginning to wonder why. The same reason, perhaps, that he had held her infant daughter without tenderness but with competence and something almost like ease. The same reason he was privately annoyed he had to hear about her various states of mind from Wilson instead of picking up on them himself.

"I thought all patients were 'special.' Or is this one special like a benefactor's nephew?" House's tone made it more than clear what he thought of _special_ but he added the finger quotes anyway.

"He's not a benefactor's anything. He's from St Mungo's."

House was very – _very_ – briefly surprised. "Then he probably swallowed a scalpel or one of his voices told him he was Jesus Christ and he tried to walk on water, whatever, not my area. Up his lithium and bundle him back to his padded room."

St Mungo's was the local mental institution. It wasn't politically correct to call it that, of course, nor was it any longer acceptable to lock away your special needs child or funny uncle, but despite the very clean, bright, modern layout and equipment, Mungo's retained an air of the macabre from the days when people did just that.

"Would you take a case for once? Read a file? Would you read _anything_?"

"Read Penthouse just last night. There was this blonde in there with the most am-"

"House!" Cuddy cut him off just as his hands came up to demonstrate what would almost certainly have been the size of some young pin-up's chest and at least three sets of eyes rolled behind her. "The patient is not psychotic, he didn't swallow anything, he doesn't think he's Jesus, or Elvis, or Santa Claus, or anything else you're going to throw out there. He's been hospitalized since he was a small child, so they have very good medical records on him, _which is why_ everyone else has concluded that this is your case."

The Dean of Medicine paused for a moment. "Oh, and I need Foreman and Taub for this technique-exchange program the local hospitals are participating in, I'm sending them to Princeton General."

Immediate protests from every person in the room. House didn't want any other doctors playing with his toys, Foreman didn't want to leave the hospital lest his recent crimes against research be held against him in the outside world, Taub would rather have Cuddy mad at him for refusing to participate than House mad at him for leaving, and Kutner and Thirteen wanted to know why they didn't get to go.

"Foreman's senior on the team and Taub can behave himself in public."

"We behave," Kutner sounded a little petulant, occupational hazard of working all day every day for a six-foot-two child.

"There was that time you set a patient on fire," Taub whispered over his shoulder.

"And stopped your own heart," Thirteen added.

"You got it started again," Kutner hissed back in a tone that suggested he thought that an unreasonable excuse to ban him from field trips.

"Dr Hadley can stand up to House if he does something unethical, and Kutner's had a few creative saves, you may need to come up with some unorthodox methods to communicate with the patient," Cuddy fixed a gimlet stare at the doctor in question, since they all knew he would certainly do something unethical. A truthful explanation, but not a complete one, since all three second-generation fellows bit and bit hard whenever House snarled at them. The real reason was that Taub and Thirteen seldom got along, Foreman and Kutner had similar difficulties, and what Thirteen and Foreman did on their own time was their affair – and she did mean _affair_ – but it wouldn't kill them to be separate at work. And she really did want Kutner's slightly warped mind on this case.

"Foreman, Taub, they're expecting you at Princeton General by eleven."

Cuddy turned on a perilously tall heel and was already several steps down the hallway before House rallied himself to call after her,

"What flavor crazy is he?"

The Dean of Medicine made a vaguely rude gesture and Foreman and Taub wisely took the opportunity while House was sufficiently distracted by the sight of the Cuddy's well-tailored rear to make their own get-away, though they weren't due at the other hospital for nearly an hour.

"I didn't set her on fire very _much_," Kutner mumbled as he flipped open the blue folder.

"Dude, let it go," Thirteen was already on page two.

* * *

AN: And so we begin again. Still working in the new team a little at a time, you get Thirteen and Kutner this time. Short chapter because that was the best place to break it up. More to follow!


	2. Chapter 2

"_I didn't set her on fire very much," Kutner mumbled as he flipped open the blue folder._

"_Dude, let it go," Thirteen was already on page two._

_

* * *

_"Uh, this is all vitals, where's his medical history?" She asked a moment later. Kutner leafed through the sparsely populated file and looked up with the same expectant expression.

House looked very close to growling at them but pulled it together long enough to confirm the young female doctor was correct. The patient was listed as being five-foot-eight, one hundred and ten pounds, brown hair and eyes, with good oxygen saturation and heart rate, blood pressure a little low but still within normal limits. There was not even a name on the page.

Twenty minutes later, Cuddy heard the familiar clatter of wood on glass, and her head of diagnostic medicine stalked in as only he knew how. A vaguely impressive feat, really, considering the hitching limp and the long hands that always expressed more of artistry than anger.

"If you wanted to play games you should said something. I know _way_ better ones than this. If this guy's been stuck in the booby hatch his whole life, they've documented every time he took a piss, where's the file?"

"Why are the mind games only amusing when _you_ play them?" Cuddy remarked rhetorically. She couldn't help the slight smile; it was so seldom she really got under House's skin, and he was under hers all the time, in all kinds of ways.

"And inconveniently for you, St Mungo's computer system is down this morning, they'll send over his records when they get it back up."

"Uh, _paper_? Give me Cameron and Chase and I'll have all four kids through it by noon."

"As a matter of fact, you can have Cameron and Chase. Kutner and Thirteen might need some back-up on this. And Mungo's records are completely computerized, they don't have any paper file for him." Cuddy, despite her efforts to use Thirteen's real surname as professionalism demanded, was succumbing as she usually did to the fringes of House's unorthodoxy.

House, as computer-literate as someone of his generation could hope to be, was still taken aback by the sort of idiocy that caused a hospital to ban paper records entirely, because without a doubt, at some point something just like this would happen.

"Can't they call Geek Squad? If I have to treat the guy I need to know which screws were already loose."

"Wave of the future, House. And you do have to treat him." They engaged in their customary pseudo-staring contest, trying to feel out weakness in one another. House cracked first, since he had no other choice, and besides, maybe it would be interesting after all. He didn't much care for insanity as a medical field, because he liked puzzles, and mental illness tended to be one without edge pieces, unsolvable, or unidentifiable as solved when it was. He did enjoy that many mentally ill people did as they liked, when they liked, and the rest of society couldn't say word one against it. And of course there was always a good opportunity for he himself to say or do something inappropriate.

Kutner and Thirteen, meanwhile, had taken themselves off to confirm that the vitals were accurate. They weren't exactly friends, but being closer in age to one another than Taub had at least leveled the playing field between them, and with Foreman and the plastic surgeon away, the alternative was for one of them to check vitals while the other sat alone in a room with a disgruntled House.

The patient was drowsy, probably from psychotropic drugs, but pliable enough. The blood pressure remained slightly low, possibly a side effect of whatever made him dozy, but everything the nurses had written was satisfactorily accurate. He was a slight man of perhaps thirty-five, though his meek posture and thin frame could have lent him more youth than he possessed. Hair and eyes were listed as brown, but both were really a muddy sort of color, hair lost between brown and blonde and eyes between brown and hazel. He didn't speak to them, but smiled in a polite – if sleepy – way, and looked both doctors calmly in the eyes when they spoke to him.

"Hey, buddy, what's your name?" Kutner smiled warmly at the man. He received no answer and Thirteen rolled her eyes.

"Can you understand me?"

The patient yawned, eyelids dropping to halfmast.

"We see you're a little tired. We'll come back when you finish your nap. Press this button if you need something." Thirteen showed him the nurse-call button next to his bed, and he seemed at least to understand what she said.

Out in the hallway, she was less patient. "He's a grown man, you don't need to talk to him like he's a baby."

"Well I don't know his name and I don't know why he was committed, so how should I talk to him?" Kutner was deeply annoyed at being called out.

"Just give him simple instructions and he'll be fine. He was making eye contact and he's not wearing a diaper so he must be high-functioning enough to use the bathroom by himself. Did they take blood?"

"Results are back in an hour," Kutner checked the chart.

"They must have him on something, maybe it'll tell us what he's being treated for at the mental hospital." Unfortunately, because the brain was a complex and delicate organ, when something went awry, the cause was not easily parsed apart. And, because anyone's broken bone could be put in a cast but no two brains ever misfired exactly the same way, no treatment was ever quite the same. The patient's bloodtest would tell them what medication he had in his system, but that alone might not be sufficient to explain why he resided in a psychiatric ward instead of a brownstone.

And, as expected, an hour later when the lab delivered the bloodwork to two junior fellows lurking in the cafeteria rather than twiddle their thumbs with House, the results were less than revealing. He had a psych cocktail in his blood, alright, one no doubt carefully calibrated over the course of several years. A touch of antipsychotic, a bit of antidepressant, sedative – _eye of newt and toe of frog­_ – sketched the outline of a man with the occasional delusion or hallucination, neither violent nor extreme, unhappy but perhaps only because he had been shut away. A very low, probably borderline IQ, both physicians estimated, since, witness House, it was the brilliant minds that came spectacularly unhinged. One took great pleasure and equally great caution with a roman candle – far less of both with an ordinary one.

Their patient was a very ordinary candle, a dim and occasionally flickering bulb, without, as yet, a medical record.

* * *

AN: Hope you're enjoying. Picks up next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

_As expected, when the lab delivered the bloodwork, the results were less than revealing. He had a psych cocktail in his blood that sketched the outline of a man with the occasional delusion or hallucination, neither violent nor extreme, unhappy but perhaps only because he had been shut away. A very low, probably borderline IQ, both physicians estimated, since it was the brilliant minds that came spectacularly unhinged. _

_Their patient was a very ordinary candle, a dim and occasionally flickering bulb, without, as yet, a medical record._

_

* * *

_The pair arrived back in the conference room to find Cameron and Chase planted so naturally in chairs it was Thirteen and Kutner who felt for a moment out of place.

"Nice of you to join us. Thirteen, I know you like it both ways but I didn't realize that meant black guys and Indians," House leered. Thirteen threw him a black look halfway horror and halfway sneer.

"I prefer blondes," Kutner tossed back, sliding into the nearest chair and earning himself the last of that look.

"Anyway, we got the bloodwork back on the patient, he's a little doped up still so we'll need five or six hours for the last of the drugs to clear his system. Ideally we'd wean him off but we don't know exactly what he's on or how much, so he'll just have to go cold turkey."

"Nothing like the DT's to ruin a perfectly good DDX," House groused. "What else?"

"He fell asleep while we were in there taking vitals, it might be from the meds, or he was really sleepy, or that's a symptom too. Either way we don't have his name or anything else yet but everything else is in normal range."

"If by normal you mean his heart is too slow." House's mouth was actually open to say something almost identical, it snapped shut audibly when Chase pre-empted him. The older doctor fought down a sensation something like pride and substituted a more comfortable annoyance.

"Too slow? Well his pressure's a little low, but he's on a bunch of meds. And some people have slower heartbeats."

"Or it's a symptom, which would be infinitely more helpful. I thought you were supposed to be the creative one."

"Do we even know why he's here? Mungo's sent him over without even a verbal explanation?" Cameron this time, concern for the patient always her priority. That was the difference between the freshmen fellows and the veterans: put under pressure, Chase, Cameron, and Foreman fought House and often one another for the sacred thing that was the patient, or at least the diagnosis. The newer team, put under the same stress, instead gleaned much more satisfaction from the fighting, leaving the patient what they used to fill the time between skirmishes.

A pager went off somewhere amongst the group, Thirteen slid a hand under her labcoat, and questioning eyes turned her way.

"I told the charge nurse to page me when he woke up," she said smugly.

"Great, let's go find out why he's here," Chase rose from the table.

"And how much crazy he brought with him," Kutner added.

House smirked. He liked the interaction between veterans and freshman, liked to congratulate himself that he'd picked a slightly more twisted batch the second time around. Foreman, Chase and Cameron were excellent doctors, one or two possibly world-class doctors, though Cameron and Foreman seemed to have switched places of late and Chase was busy wrapping his emotional leash ever tighter around a tree doing favors for the new team that part of him enjoyed and part of him resented, because he halfway disliked still being House's lackey and halfway he wished he still was. Sliding out of focus and out of his life, those three, House mused, and he wouldn't have admitted to regretting it because that would be admitting some small part in it.

He had a different relationship with the new group, they thought themselves far more jaded than they were, and behaved more casually with him though they knew him less thoroughly.

Thirteen could rip out an incisive insult to his manhood without batting an eye, but she would never show up at his house at midnight to sew up a razorblade slice. She played the daily ping-pong game of taunt and blame very well, but lately her armor was falling away in whole sheets to reveal a woman who wanted desperately connect with someone before she died, and too distracted by her own terminal illness to do the connecting. Her use to him would end before her career did; too much navel-gazing and all willingness to practice unorthodox medicine would vanish behind the sound of a ticking clock in her head.

Taub was an above-average physician though not a brilliant one, useful because he was not afraid of House, with a mercenary streak like the Gaza Strip, which meant he would stand up to House to keep his medical license but go along with the crazier ideas when it served his own purposes. Topping forty now, he went home to a large well-furnished house and an unreasonably attractive wife and he didn't need this job to prove himself the way his predecessors had.

Kutner was House's wild card, the way Chase had been, although Chase was a closed book he'd had to pry open page by page and Kutner tossed out his personal details carelessly and without apology. Those details assembled oddly, though, producing a man with a perpetually bemused expression and less common sense than was good for him, but a quirky sense of humor and occasional flashes of real genius. He could be compassionate when he chose, or equally sophomoric, dressed in House's own accepted uniform of t-shirts emblazoned with the logos of little-known punk rock bands and Chuck Taylors propped up on a handy chair.

In contrast, Taub wore pressed slacks and a tie, by all appearances unbothered by his receding hairline and noticeably lesser height, and Thirteen dressed her part as a pretty young woman; would have ditched the labcoat altogether except that House would ogle her. The three of them gave little indication they noticed such personal details about one another, or any at all, except the ones they could use as weapons or to climb inside the heads of those who wished they wouldn't. They made the appearance of it for the sake of professionalism, and squabbled like siblings, oh yes, but not the way the originals had, with an undercurrent of intimacy, knowing if one drowned the other two could not row the boat alone. No one dared suggest Thirteen make coffee the way Cameron had; Kutner and Thirteen bought theirs in the cafeteria and Taub, the only one who knew how kitchen appliances worked, was also the only one other then House to attempt use of the coffeemaker. He was also the only one who bothered to open House's mail, out of some guilty sense of duty, because he was at heart a tidy man who liked things, like his Ikea house and his sultry wife and his shiny new car, to be in order. He didn't write apologies in Cameron's cheerleader script, however, and neither of the other two had ever bothered to do so much as slit an envelope. Kutner didn't even open his own mail.

Even when Chase, Foreman, and Cameron had hated each other – and they _had_ hated each other, off and on, in different numbers and for different reasons – they had always begrudgingly acknowledged that they all shared metaphorical blood. When Tritter froze Cameron and Foreman's bank accounts, Chase had bought them lunch, but he had also paid Foreman's gas bill – the closest these three got to that was Kutner stealing change from Taub to buy his girly flavored coffees.

Still, though House abhorred change, and did what he could to return things to their usual orbit when he could – witness the recent ridiculousness with the booby-trapped office door and the stolen cane and the cancelled power and the total lack reprisal for all those things – nothing stayed the same forever, and he supposed that as long as he was torturing someone, who the someone was could be fairly interchangeable.


	4. Chapter 4

_Still, though House abhorred change, and did what he could to return things to their usual orbit when he could – witness the recent ridiculousness with the booby-trapped office door and the stolen cane and the cancelled power and the total lack reprisal for all those things – nothing stayed the same forever, and he supposed that as long as he was torturing someone, who the someone was could be fairly interchangeable. _

_

* * *

_Off in the patient's room, Kutner and Thirteen neither knew this nor would have particularly cared if they did. They had been selected originally by a system of one-upmanship, and came equipped already with the keen sense of competition bred so powerfully in Americans from childhood. The dice had been rolled such that in one way or another, for the rest of their fellowship and possibly for the rest of their careers, they would always be trying to best their colleagues and prove themselves to authority.

Chase and Cameron, not thusly motivated, though Chase had had it burnt out of him the hard way, were content to take a supervisory role as the patient's interview began. Neither junior physician was completely comfortable, it was clear, though Thirteen managed to sound the less patronizing of the pair.

"Hi there, we're doctors. We're going to ask you a few questions, ok? Do you know where you are?"

The patient shook his head, though seemed unperturbed by the situation at large, leaning back on the pillow the nurse had propped up for him and balancing each thin arm on the rails of the bed. The skin was papery, showing a blue tracing of vein in the creases.

"You're at Princeton-Plainsboro hospital. Your doctors at St Mungo's said you were sick."

"Do you think he knows he came from St Mungo's?" Kutner interrupted his colleague.

"He's not deaf," Chase reminded him, met with the younger doctor's patented moron look, the one that said _don't blame me, I don't know any better_. It annoyed Kutner to be made to feel he was not as bright as his colleagues or boss, whether it was true or not, but he occasionally used it as a defense against answering difficult questions or being held totally responsible for error. That, at least, seemed to indicate he was smarter than he appeared, and not above some elementary manipulation.

"Do you know your name?" Cameron jumped in, a softer touch. Again, the patient shook his head, pleasant smile still screwed in place.

"At least he doesn't mind much," Thirteen whispered over her shoulder to Kutner, who agreed.

"You came here from another hospital St Mungo's, you live there." _If 'living' was the right word for being thrown away for being a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Didn't matter what they called it or how soothing a color they painted the walls now, a psych ward was a psych ward._ "Do you remember why they sent you here?"

This time, the man nodded vigorously, apparently eager to please. They hadn't heard him speak yet; weren't sure he could.

"Why did they send you here?" Chase now, not sure they were doing the right thing asking yes-no questions of a man with dubious communication skills.

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume amongst the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind demand that they should declare the causes which impel them to the action!"

His voice was thin, but his inflection was dramatic.

"Uh…_that's_ a good reason. What is that, a sermon?"

Thirteen shrugged, didn't much care.

Chase looked a little scandalized. "That's your Declaration of Independence!"

* * *

AN: A little short, I know, I wrote it first and broke it into chapters after, this bit didn't section well. Incidentally, St Mungo's is a real place, it's just a cathedral in Glasgow rather than a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. A little poetic license. Enjoy! :)


	5. Chapter 5

"_Why did they send you here?" Chase now, not sure they were doing the right thing asking yes-no questions of a man with dubious communication skills._

"_When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume amongst the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind demand that they should declare the causes which impel them to the action!"_

"_That's a good reason. What is that, a sermon?"_

_Chase looked a little scandalized. "That's your Declaration of Independence!"_

_

* * *

_In the conference room, the younger pair of doctors took most of the glory for the interview. They had asked him several more questions which he'd successfully responded to with "yes" or "no," and another few that he had answered as grandiosely as before. They had very limited luck getting him to answer questions that required him to generate his own responses; he was coherent to a point, but usually provided one- or two-word answers and when he didn't, it was more recitation of various famous texts – Macbeth's "Tomorrow" soliloquy, the Gettysburg Address, and the first few paragraphs of Genesis. _Gonna have that in me head all day now_.

His affect, when he did this, was like a child in a grammar school play – each sentence identically inflected, a regurgitation of learned, and meaningless, syllables. Someone had taught him all this, but who?

More importantly, was he sick or injured? Perhaps his mental condition was deteriorating and needed treatment. There was also the possibility he had been brought to hospital by accident, in place of another patient, or had been abandoned there by a relative who had inherited an invalid uncle or cousin, and was unwilling or unable to continue providing for his upkeep.

The team, despite their considerable and varied talent, could not include mind reading among them, and needed either more information from the psychiatric facility, or a better way to tap into whatever information the patient himself possessed. Ideally, they could start administering the standard battery of tests, although given that the patient as well as his ailment was unknown, it bordered on irresponsible to run such costly and possibly disturbing tests without knowing who would be saddled with the bills and whether the confined space of the MRI tube or the prick of another IV needle would be too much for the little man.

Four doctors marked off their territory on either side of the argument, Cameron and Kutner voting for waiting, continuing to question him and badgering Mungo's for data. Chase and Thirteen wanted to administer everything they could think of and hunt for buried treasure amongst the results.

It was hard to tell whether House was paying more attention to their report or to perfecting his yo-yo technique. Walk the Dog was going quite well.

"What are Simple Simon's psych symptoms?" Internally he congratulated himself on a masterful alliteration.

"He's verbal and he makes good eye contact but he provides inappropriate responses to questions," Thirteen recited. She knew what her own illness was, but if she didn't, she would want someone to turn over all the stones until they found the answer.

"Inappropriate like he doesn't know the answer or inappropriate like he stares at Cameron's rack?"

Cameron rolled her eyes indulgently. "He seems to have a delayed echolalia, he repeats speeches and lines from famous scripts, but he didn't give us actual answers beyond nodding or shaking his head."

"What speeches?" House, merely curious now. Something about a peforming lunatic amused him, like the olden-day children trained to spout brimstone evangelical sermons on street corners.

"'A decent respect for the opinions of mankind demand that should declare the causes which impel them to the action.'" Kutner quoted in a mock-dramatic voice.

House's yo-yo came to a halt. "Is that what he said?"

"It's from the Declaration of Independence, boss."

This time both women rolled their eyes, in perfect unison. Chase fixed an even blue-green stare on the younger doctor until he had to shift in his chair.

"I bet Cameron told you that," House snapped back.

"That was Chase, actually. I only know 'we the people, in order to form a more perfect union….'" Cameron responded mildly.

House was momentarily distracted and glanced sharply at the Australian intensivist. "A little suspicious, isn't it, you being so interested in our nation's secrets?"

"The Declaraction of Independence is hardly one of your nation's secrets. Besides, haven't _you_ ever wanted to know something useless?"

"Ignoring the fact that Dr Chase here just called the document upon which our country was founded useless, was what Kutner said _exactly_ what the patient said?" House demanded, edge in his voice suggesting he had picked up on something the others hadn't, and should have.

Four junior physicians shrugged, nodded, made various affirmative sounds. House was already up, lurching towards the door.

"Chase, your quote, your turn, let's go. The rest of you, get as much from St Mungo's as you can, research mental illnesses with whatever symptoms he's got, and someone go request something unnecessary from Cuddy."

Those directives fell pretty naturally to Cameron, Thirteen, and Kutner respectively, while Chase discovered that he had forgotten how to stay in step with a man whose steps were never the same length.

In the patient's room, House perched himself on the sink ledge with a clipboard, every appearance of the engaged physician. From the patient's angle, he seemed to be taking detailed notes. From Chase's angle, it was clear he was drawing a nude woman – Cuddy, possibly Thirteen.

The patient himself remained unperturbed. Not enough time had passed for him to be experiencing withdrawal from his psychotropic drugs, and given that he was being washed, fed, entertained, and in new surroundings for the first time in forty years, he seemed to be having the time of his life. He had looked up when House and Chase entered, seemed to have no difficulty making eye contact, though his expression was vapid and when he spoke it was still as if he read movie lines, with learned inflection. _Lights are on but nobody's home?_

Chase was reluctant to administer even a course of low-dosage antibiotics as a preventative measure for whatever might ail him, since a cillin allergy would leave him convulsing on the floor, and a sulfa one would blow him up like a balloon. Disappointing, because the intensivist loved a nice invasive test. No desire to be a surgeon; too fiddly for him, and too much work, but snaking a tube up someone's orifices or a wire into their heart gave him just enough adrenaline to make his day worthwhile.

He settled for a saline drip to keep the slight man hydrated and help flush the remaining meds from his system a little faster.

A loud clatter as House dropped his clipboard – not such an accident, given his "who me?" facial expression. The poor man on the bed jumped quite violently, thin arms coming off the bed rails. Chase frowned at House and put a reassuring hand on the patient's shoulder, which seemed to settle him.

"Sorry, just a little accident. I'm going to put this tube in your arm now to help you feel better, is that alright?"

Not really offering him the choice, but it usually calmed children to feel as though they had the option of control, and so far their patient had responded much like one, so Chase put on his sunny Australian smile and his kindest voice and he wasn't afraid of House anymore so let him make all the fun he wanted. The man nodded agreeably.

"Great. Are you left-handed or right-handed?"

"Right-handed," the patient pronounced with careful deliberation. Chase nodded and slid the needle into the soft crease of his left elbow. Didn't make much different really, which arm they used, but the non-dominant one moved less so the IV had less chance of being dislodged.

House narrowed his eyes. "Here, I need your signature on this." He held out his clipboard, R-rated picture gone, and letting the pen roll off into the patient's blanketed lap.

The man picked it up, hooked his hand, and wrote with passing legibility in a left-hander's tilted scrawl, _Luke Skywalker_.

"Oy, you're a lefty," Chase protested.

"He's a _liar_!" House crowed.

* * *

AN: Been on vacation but am now back to work, enjoy the latest installment! This is moving a little slower than I anticipated so will be a longish story, after which I will likely be taking a hiatus for a while.


	6. Chapter 6

_The man picked up the paper and wrote in a left-hander's tilted scrawl, Luke Skywalker._

"_Oy, you're a lefty," Chase protested._

"_He's a liar!" House crowed._

_

* * *

_"Being a liar is _not_ a medical disorder," Chase hissed as he hustled House from the room. They were both a little surprised when he managed it, because House topped the younger man by a few inches and probably outweighed him as well, despite the Australian's stockier physique. More importantly, House was also meaner, but his desire to gloat outweighed his desire to remain in with the patient, whom he was not really interested in now that he had a new clue. _Like those birds, what are they, magpies, that get all distracted by the shiny objects_...

"Remember our Phineas Gage patient?"

"Sure, you made me cut out a chunk of his brain and he still said anything he felt like saying." '_Made_ me,' that was a lie too; Chase had out-manoeuvred the older man by asking for a reason and got more than he bargained for, saw how easily the patient's temporary circumstance could become House's permanent life, and how clearly House himself realized it, and hadn't been able to refuse the request because if he could keep this guy's life from unraveling maybe House's wouldn't either. But he had to play the part, and between two men it was far easier to pretend House had forced him into something that to admit they had both had a moment of sympathetic honesty.

"No, he said exactly what he was thinking. He _couldn't _lie. _All_ this guy can do is lie."

"Some sort of reverse-disinhibition?"

"No, the opposite of disinhibition is inhibition, and we all have that." _Except for me_. "This is hyper-inhibition, super-inhibition, über-inhibition. I like it."

"How did you know he was lying?"

"They're always lying."

A roll of the eyes. "Sure they are. I meant how did you know he'd told me the wrong hand?"

"Haven't yet accepted that I know everything? Alright then, situational awareness – he had his legs crossed. Left foot was on top."

"You can cross your legs either way, lots of people do." Handedness was poorly understood, but no matter which hand someone wrote with, any number of environmental or transient factors affected something as frequent and inconsequential as crossing of legs or arms. House looked dangerously close to having merely lucked into his discovery.

"He also jumped when you dropped that clipboard."

"_You_ dropped the clipboard."

"Did I? How clumsy of me. Startle reflex, his right arm was in front. Should've been the other way around if he was right-handed." Also true: the classic startle reflex, arms brought up to protect the face and upper torso, kept the dominant, and therefore stronger and more agile, hand, closer to the face, while the weaker one was always higher and farther out.

Chase had begun moving as they talked and since House always had a certain nervous energy despite his limited mobility it wasn't hard to get him walking. Habit and a few well-timed invasions of his personal space guided House back down the corridor to the conference room – although House was not a man who missed minor details, so it was possible he'd simply acquiesced to the intensivist's guidance.

"We miss anything good?" Thirteen's question, Cameron was content to wait out her former boss and Kutner liked to mete out the openings he gave the man to smack him down.

"_You_ don't know your national history." House jabbed the length of his cane at Kutner anyway, and the Indian doctor halfway rolled his eyes. Who cared if he'd rather watch the Cartoon Network than the History Channel?

"Big deal, so I don't know the Declaration of Independence. I got the Hippocratic Oath right."

"You don't, and apparently none of the other good Americans here does either. George Washington would be ashamed."

"George Washington didn't sign the Declaration of Independence." Thirteen pointed out reasonably.

"House, what's wrong with the patient?" Cameron interjected, attempting to exert a little balance, since Chase, behind him, had obviously given up the ghost on that.

"Comrade Kutner repeated exactly what the patient said. But the patient got it wrong. The line is 'impel them to the separation,' not 'impel them to the action.' I don't suppose anyone would know if he got anything else wrong?" House looked around like an algebra teacher polling the remedial class for a solution to x.

"Genesis." Chase mumbled.

"What was that?"

"Out of the Bible? He missed a word in Genesis too."

"But only one, right?"

"You think he got it wrong on purpose?" Kutner this time, not so much contributing to the lecture as thinking out loud.

"A crazy man gets one famous passage wrong by a single word, he's crazy. He gets four wrong by a single word, it's a symptom. I have already cleverly confirmed this symptom. He is…drum roll?"

"He's a liar." Chase cut in with a certain amount of satisfaction. "The man can't tell the truth.

"Can't or won't?" Thirteen asked.

"Apparently can't, since he really seems to be trying to answer our questions. Told me he was right-handed and then signed this with his left hand." Chase passed over the piece of paper.

Kutner laughed shortly and Thirteen, smiling faintly, asked. "Luke Skywalker? Is that a lie or a delusion?"

House by then had retreated to his stool. Lately he was more clockmaker, less puppeteer. It was less work for him to merely set things in motion and watch them come unglued – and while he had fewer opportunities to deliberately set his fellows up for failure or prank, he found he enjoyed equally well watching them squabble in their sandbox. He hadn't realized how many rough edges four people could find to rub each other raw and these did it so marvelously.

"Maybe a little of both, if he's not in touch with reality he wouldn't know if he's answering truthfully or not," Cameron hypothesized.

"Except he'd have to get something right eventually, if he were just answering randomly," Chase pointed out, slouching in a chair. "As far as we know he's answered _every_ question wrong. He's doing it deliberately or he's compelled to avoid the truth."

What amused House about the case was obvious to everyone. That it also amused Kutner was merely gravy. Wheels could be seen turning furiously in his head before he spoke.

"He's answered things wrong, but not completely wrong. He got one word wrong in a couple things, but he got a hella lot of them right. So can he tell partial lies? Like what if his name's really Luke, so he can't say that, but since it obviously isn't Luke Skywalker, that makes it the lie? How much truth can he tell?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes. If I show him digits zero to nine and ask which one his phone number _doesn't_ start with, does he then have to show me which one it really _does_ start with, or can he show me anything?"

A sudden brittle silence as they all realized Kutner could have cracked the code. Then they all scrambled to be the first out the door to test the theory. If it worked, it would be a tedious, roundabout way of communicating, but they might finally get somewhere.

House leaned back to get a good clear view of Thirteen and Cameron's respective rear ends. Thirteen knew he was doing it, flipped him a casual bird but let him look. The boys had longer legs and for a moment obscured the more interesting half of the group, thereby distracting the diagnostician. He thoughtfully eyed Chase's retreating bowlegged gait, partially the relic of an Outback upbringing which lent a little swagger to his tread, and perhaps somewhat a result of the flat-soled sneakers he wore now that he spent his days in scrubs. But no, he wasn't imagining it; when had Chase acquired that limp?

A rather ingenious way of getting information, Kutner had stumbled on, if it worked. House hadn't forgotten Cuddy's assessment of the young doctor either, now that it rang loud and clear in his head: _you've had a few creative saves_. Not an invalid analysis, though damned if he'd tell Kutner that. The guy put out twice as much effort trying to compensate when he thought he was the local dim bulb, no way House would mess that up.

Still, there was the other half of that thought. _Cuddy_. Nervy, lately, since she had mastered single parenthood; back to her old confidence level and maybe a little extra now that she was "personally fulfilled." Of course, he had thrown her that bone with the too-honest guy saying he'd rather do her than Thirteen. Maybe that was why Thirteen had let him look…and had she been dressing more risque lately? He was missing something there, but he'd get it eventually, always did.

Either way, it was high time he did something to torture his boss instead of letting her get all soft and comfortable. It would make her a better administrator in the end. He did it for the good of the hospital. Really.

An hour later, Cuddy was halfway into her office when the words she'd seen registered properly. She sighed. Her door now read: _DEAN OF ME._ House's latest way of letting her know he and his manic brand of medicine were never far away.

Their chemistry was still more potent than in past years, but for either to admit that would be something too like honesty for House and too like vulnerability for Cuddy. The last time they'd tried that he'd copped a feel and made some wisecrack and all possibilities between them had fizzled like a wet firecracker.

As far as the door was concerned, it couldn't be a quick task to scrape off the shellacked letters; she wondered vaguely if some nurse should be reprimanded for their inattention, and made a note to have her assistant call the painter again.

When House returned from mooching lunch off Wilson, he paused outside the glass door that formerly read "DEPARTMENT OF DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE." Now it just read "DAMN IT."


	7. Chapter 7

_When House returned from mooching lunch off Wilson, he paused outside the glass door that formerly read "DEPARTMENT OF DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE." Now it just read "DAMN IT."_

* * *

Outwardly peeved, House couldn't keep a little extra snap out of his blue eyes, a sign that internally he was smiling. Cuddy had risen to his challenge admirably, but this did require him to formulate a counterstrike. But privately he was both satisfied and a tiny bit relieved, because at least some balance could be restored to the universe. Of course, some things were permanently unbalanced, like the little man being asked absurd questions by no fewer than four top-flight doctors.

They had to ask several they already knew the answer to in order to calibrate their system.

"What color is your hair _not_?"

"Brown." So far so good.

"What letter does the alphabet _not_ begin with?"

"A." Better yet.

"What does two plus two _not_ equal?"

"Six." Derailment.

It was Cameron who reasoned that if he didn't know the right _right_ answer to a question, he couldn't give them the right _wrong_ answer. The patient could sign his name, could apparently read, but just because an orderly had taught him to sound out Doctor Seuss as a child didn't mean he could do math in his head. A few more number questions confirmed that, and they stuck to letters or basic obvious truths about him or others in the room.

"Is Doctor Hadley a boy or a girl?"

"Boy." He actually smiled when he said it. Back on track.

It had to be a question with a single, concrete answer, neither open to interpretation nor with multiple correct responses. It was like asking for wishes from the genies in the old stories – leave any leeway in the request, and you wouldn't get quite what you wanted. Questions like "how do you feel?" resulted in recitations of various well-known speeches or passages, of which he evidently had an extensive supply. Always they were just slightly misquoted, although the doctors were hard-pressed to find where. The patient clearly knew such questions required a detailed answer from him, but was unable to formulate his own – and even then, prevented somehow from quoting perfectly correctly.

_What is your name_ garnered just such a performance, but _is your first name Luke_ got them a "no." Which meant it was.

Thirteen went back to the questions they'd asked initially, since at the time they'd taken the responses literally. Reverse the polarity, and he knew his own name, and where he was, but not why he was there.

"Are you sick?" Too general a question, they realized, when a negative response could have meant he was physically ill, or that he knew more than they expected about his own mental state.

"Does anything in your body hurt? Like your stomach or your head?" Thirteen tried to narrow it down, but the examples made it too complicated a question. She sighed, readjusted her patience.

"Does your head hurt?" Nod, so no.

"Does your stomach hurt?" Another nod, also a no.

"Do any of your arms and legs hurt?" Kutner, asking after that which most closely approximated his own specialty, sports medicine – tendons, ligaments, muscles, bones, the structure which kept the human body upright and in action.

The little man shook his head. Finally, a yes.

"Point to where it hurts." The Indian doctor rethought his request even as it left his mouth, because he wasn't sure if pointing fell under communicating, and if it did, he wouldn't be able to point to the thing that actually did hurt.

The patient lifted his right hand, pointed to the IV tube in the crook of his left elbow. It was a fair bet that that actually did hurt, but now they had to go through a new series of questions to prove that he could point to exactly what they asked, instead of its opposite. He could, to a certain extent. Questions with inexact answers, like Kutner's, he could comply with, but questions with precise answers, like "point to the number four," must have fired just enough of the right – or wrong – neurons to prevent him from doing it correctly.

"Does anything else hurt?" Chase asked, looking over Cameron's shoulder at the notes she was taking. Old habits died hard, and though House was a habit like committing arson was a habit, his influence was hard to break all the same.

Their patient seemed a little unsure. Perhaps he had arthritis or some other chronic ailment, which would hurt him, but not be an unusual pain. Maybe he was uncomfortable – nausea or vertigo, pressure in his chest or trouble breathing – but not actually in pain.

"Have you been throwing up?" Chase tried again. The room was a little crowded but they were doing a fair job letting one another ask questions. Months and years of DDX had taught them to slash at wrong answers, not stitch them together to make the right one, and they were all of them smart enough that the molasses slowness of this bit-by-bit process was tortuous.

Luke Skywalker shook his head no, he wasn't vomiting, and, right on cue, leaned over the side of the bed and empied his stomach onto Kutner's shoes.

* * *

AN: Thank-you to everyone who reviewed last chapter, I had despaired of ever getting feedback on this! Especially flattered by the praise of my characterisations, I work very hard to use everything we know about the characters without adding anything that isn't canon. Sorry so long since last update, real life interfered. Enjoy!


	8. Chapter 8

_Luke Skywalker shook his head no, he wasn't vomiting, and, right on cue, leaned over the side of the bed and emptied his stomach onto Kutner's shoes._

_

* * *

_They had all been ralphed on enough times by now to suppress the sympathetic-spew reflex, though Kutner looked thoroughly disgusted and Thirteen took a healthy step away from him. He did manage to resist the urge to run full-tilt to the locker room and scrub himself down, an undignified response which would have earned him no points amongst his peers.

"Nausea, check," Chase noted on his sheet with customary dry humor.

Cameron's pager went off just then, and the others all glanced at theirs automatically. "Mungo's was supposed to call me back, charge nurse said she'd page me," she explained.

"I'm gonna go, uh…" Kutner gestured to his lower half. Chase and Thirteen waved him out emphatically, and both he and Cameron made purposeful exits, leaving the room slightly less claustrophobic. The remaining doctors made sure to stand out of range.

They regrouped in the conference room some forty-five minutes later, Kutner in different trousers and shoes. House was nowhere to be found, which was not unusual because the man did love an entrance.

"What did Mungo's say?" Thirteen asked.

Cameron grimaced. "Well first they wanted to know why I was calling, then they had no idea who I was talking about. As near as I can tell, when their computers went down, they lost track of our patient. They said they sent his medical record a few hours ago, but we never received it, so my guess is they sent it to the wrong hospital."

"Or they sent him to the wrong hospital," Kutner remarked philosophically.

"I sweet-talked the nurse on the phone into checking around to the other hospitals to see where his record ended up. She'll forward it to us when it turns up. Meanwhile, we still have to do things the old-fashioned way."

When House marched in a handful of minutes later, all four doctors were clustered at one end of the table, facing the whiteboard – _his_ whiteboard – and Cameron, wisely, was holding the marker, probably because they had deduced correctly that she was the one he could or would do least harm to.

"Touch not my whiteboard lest ye be touched!" House intoned with apocryphal solemnity, extending his cane in warning. Cameron took a step back but didn't relinquish the marker.

"Or would you _like_ to be touched?" He added, in a different tone of voice. "Aussie not doing it for you these days?"

"Aussie does it for her just fine," Chase cut in, standing up neatly between the two of them. How many times had she told him nothing had ever or would ever happen between herself and the older doctor, but he just couldn't help that flash of territorial jealousy. House was pushing his buttons, he knew, but knowing didn't free him of the effects.

"Glad you could join us, House, we've uncovered a lot," the blonde intensivist redirected the conversation. He and Cameron both took seats as House's larger presence forced them back into their traditional positions.

"And the patient is definitely sick," Thirteen added, more to tweak Kutner about smelling like a stranger's vomit than to enlighten their boss.

"Ah yes, how is Pinocchio?"

"Shouted groceries all over me," Kutner grumbled.

House very nearly smiled. Instead, he half-turned to where several different handwritings marred the pristine surface of his whiteboard. Most prominently figured was a cheerleader print that had to be Cameron's. Kutner, predictably, had a fifth grader's scrawl, less from sloppiness than disinterest in making it more attractive, and Chase wrote the thin D'Nealean cursive taught in every Catholic school on the globe, though when he printed as he had here it was in straight-backed capitals. Absent was any sign of the fourth member of his mixed team – Thirteen's handwriting was neat enough to read and messy enough to have personality, but of late she avoided writing, lest she one day see the pen shake in her hand.

Symptoms were written in two columns. House's deductive reasoning was sharp enough to isolate one column as symptoms of withdrawal from psychotropic meds, leaving the other everything else the patient presented with. Someone, probably Kutner, had looped circles of various colors around different numbers of symptoms. _Lil' of column A, lil' of column B_. It was a familiar system, one they broke out when multiple possibilities competed for the cause of their patient's woes.

In this case, symptoms of withdrawal could also be symptoms of some other ailment – lots of things caused vomiting, for example – and perhaps some of them overlapped while others did not. And, while they didn't know for sure their patient _was_ experiencing withdrawal, it was a fair bet he would soon if he wasn't already. Psychotropic medication, like any powerful drug, including House's own beloved vicodin, was normally begun at a baseline dosage and adjusted up as a patient's individual needs required. If and when such drugs were no longer deemed necessary, they were tapered back down. Sudden cessation of this type of meds without the tapering could, although didn't always, cause nausea, vertigo, tremors, depression or mania, and blinding headaches, sometimes for months. Unfortunately, any one of those symptoms could also be the result of an entirely separate physical disorder, or the patient's own as-yet undefined mental illness.

Symptoms in the other column included pain in his limbs and torso – they hadn't managed to be more specific than that – lack of appetite, slight fever, and, of course, lying.

Three or four circles seemed to indicate everything from brain cancer to influenza, and House was unimpressed.

* * *

AN: Had hoped to keep my updates towards the two-three day mark but it looks like once a week is about the best I can do. Two or three more chapters ought to wrap this up pretty well, thanks to everyone who's reading!


	9. Chapter 9

_Three or four circles seemed to indicate everything from brain cancer to influenza, and House was unimpressed._

_

* * *

_Their winding route to information was too narrow and too tedious; the patient's fever, barely detectable when measured originally, was rising and he seemed to be in growing discomfort but couldn't tell them just where.

The little man was actually in pain – sweating and groaning, clutching his belly – before they made any further headway on the case. The elusive records had finally arrived, three CD's worth of information in a brown paper envelope.

Cameron knew her strengths; sat down before the computer and scrolled the mouse button as fast as she could read, Thirteen next to her, detailed into taking notes. Kutner and Chase were tasked to return to the patient with House, who was sufficiently entertained by their resident liar to pay him a bit more personal attention. En route, House unintentionally solved his other mystery when he stopped suddenly and saw Chase in his periphery come up short as well. Chase hadn't begun limping because of his own legs, he was limping because of House's – the only way he knew to stay in line with the older doctor, because his old position had been in the back where he hadn't had to worry about such things.

The patient was curled on his side now, tears on his cheeks though he couldn't tell them what hurt, and was in too much pain to tell them what didn't. His abdomen was rigid, when Kutner palpated it, and Chase hung an IV of broad-range antibiotics, once Cameron had confirmed he wasn't allergic to anything.

With their patient too sick now to play their old games, House had lost interest and the other two were losing optimism. Back in the conference room, Cameron and Thirteen weren't doing much better.

The men had not enough information, the women too much. Thirty years of institutionalization had generated a lot of data, some of it vaguely interesting, most of it irrelevant, and the crucial bits, if they existed, were hidden somewhere amongst it all.

Seated back round the table, they had taken to having Cameron call out sentences and notations here and there, where they could be discussed or dismissed by the ground. Also a tedious system, but better than nothing. A few more possible symptoms were added to the board, question marks beside them, and few erased. They were reasonably sure the so-called lying was not a symptom of his current ailment, but rather of his general disorder. Much of the rest, hard to say.

Thirteen, passing out a large-ish stack of pages they had printed up, caught the edge of her coffee mug and tipped it onto the floor, narrowly missing splashing House as he shouldered his way in from his main office.

"Hm, party foul," he observed with a raised eyebrow, probably debating whether to make a Huntington's joke or not. Too easy, he decided; it would lose sting if she got too accustomed to it.

"What's the penalty for that, everyone kisses the person to their right?" He said instead.

"That's fondu, House," Thirteen reminded him. She was right, the person who dropped their food off the stick into the fondu pot had to kiss someone on either side of them.

"Sorry Kutner," she added with a wink over her shoulder. They rolled their eyes at House, as was required, ignored his childishness, as was required, continued DDX, as was required, and didn't know that in another week or so she _would_ be kissing Kutner, dead man's kisses, forcing pointless air into stagnant lungs.

For now though, it was the Indian's man's save, when a random comment rattled the pieces in just the right way.

"We could've finished this a day ago if they had just kept real patient files," House grumbled, ignoring any attempt to force him to look at the pages before him. "They got their science-fiction in my medicine and now we've got to slog through how many chapters of junk data on this guy?"

"Technically, Thirteen and Cameron are doing the slogging…" Chase observed mildly.

House glared at him. "It's all too damn high-tech."

Kutner sat up straight; the others all recognized the lightning-struck look of someone who'd just seen all the pieces slot together.

"It is too high-tech, isn't it?"

Over House's mock-horrified gasp, he grabbed the eraser from the corner of the whiteboard and swiped it through all but three symptoms, barely pausing to set it down again before heading for the door.

"The guy's got psych symptoms and he ended up in our department, so we thought it must be exotic, we shoulda thought way more basic. Oh, Chase, you better book an OR."

"And why…?"

"Cause I think this guy's appendix exploded about an hour ago."

That sent them hustling, because basic or no, an exploded anything would turn a human body septic in no time, not to mention leaving the patient in excruciating pain.

Chase, peering over the surgeon's shoulder in the emergency surgery, cringed inwardly at the garbage the ruptured appendix had leaked into the surrounding peritoneum, but with any luck they could clean most of it out. Up in the gallery, even at such distance the other three could see the angry, inflamed organ in the otherwise healthy gut.

A little later, patient still in post-op but expected to recover well, a blousy, middle-aged nurse rapped politely on the glass door of the conference room.

"Excuse me, is this Diagnostics?"

"Isn't that what it says on the door?" House shot back acidly.

"Well, no…" she glanced down; the door still read "DAMN IT" because House didn't care enough to fix it and Cuddy hadn't gotten around to making him pay to repair her own vandalism.

Caught, he only stared narrowly at her.

"Please excuse Doctor House, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed this decade. Can we help you?" Thirteen stood up.

"I was told you had admitted one of my patients, there was a terrible mix-up with the charts, and it took us ages to track down where he'd gone."

"You're from St Mungo's," Chase guessed.

"Yes! So you do have Luke."

They'd known his name, but House had been calling him Pinocchio or some similar eponym for the better part of a day, so it sounded odd to hear something more familiar from her mouth.

"Yes, we do, he's still recovering from an appendectomy, but he should be awake shortly if you'd like to go wait for him to come out of post-op." Thirteen, still the designated spokesman since the others had fulfilled their jobs already.

"I'd love to. I'm sure he wasn't much trouble, but I didn't know if he'd be nervous off the unit. He's been there most of his life, you know; I've worked there twenty-four years now, he was only seventeen but he'd been there a few years already. Of course, it wasn't a wonderful place to be then, but we've come a long way since then."

"You were the one who taught him all those speeches," Cameron remarked thoughtfully.

The nurse smiled. "Yes, Luke does love to talk. I thought it'd be good for him."

"If you come this way I'll show you to post-op. He does have a unique method of communication," Thirteen gestured ahead of her out the door.

"Ah, you mean the-"

"_Lying_?" House couldn't resist one last irony-laden word. To her credit, the nurse managed to keep whatever she thought of him from her face, and instead gave a short laugh.

"It's not really lying. He just has to say the reverse of whatever he actually means. You must have figured it out, you found out what was wrong with him. Once you know the secret, Luke is really a very good conversationalist, for someone with his difficulties."

"The secret?" They hadn't quite left the room yet, out of politeness to the others still there, and all the door shut, the remaining doctors just caught the nurse's words.

"Of course. He can answer questions normally, you just have to tell him it's opposite day."

* * *

AN: This chapter could be written with more sophistication, I'll admit, but, of course, the writers killed off Kutner, so my story was rendered moot as long as he was in it. A shame, of course, and I elected to just finish it up all at once as quickly as possible, rather than go back and try to sub in a different character everywhere he appeared. Also tried to date it before the man died, for what it's worth, though it put a little too serious a note in there, this wasn't meant to be a deeply dramatic piece. Thanks to all who read, especially those who gave me such lovely reviews. If anyone wants another story, please speak up, because otherwise I am now likely on hiatus.


End file.
